New words that part my lips are vast and wide
Still sometimes spilling sweetness, shame and spit.
A pattern simply changing with the times,
So I can't say that you're to blame for it.

New insights, clouds, dark lakes where pebbles drop.
Ideas float around that serve me well.
The light with shadow, night with glowing dots.
Sweet intricacies dance while we repel.

I've learned to ebb and flow beside my lungs,
To hold the space, despite the urge to run.
This burning flame needs fuel to elevate,
To learn the lesson. Protect me, I'll wait.

To blindly follow : voiceless to
reality as it splits the seams of hope,
seems senseless in the modern day.
Desire in minor doses, keep me afloat
while I play in the darkened margins of faith.
To ripen: ripping my voids wide open to
bask in the space. Become undone,
unpicked at every outline as they blur
into one. Will you join me?

In worlds where we could drift, depth
in the sound of a hollow early morning,
there could be something beyond the silence.
It grows, alongside urgency, while we
wait for pulses to rise higher than
the rule of day. Then, would you play?

If seeds don’t tend to spill far from the tree,
I just can’t help but wonder where I’ll land.
In shame, my poisoned roots conspire to plant
unstable footing: reckless destiny.
You, cold in slow-birthed pain, beg to be free,
away from grasp of rope-red harnessed hands
while I struggle to find my feet and stand.
A narrative intended to repeat.

Don’t touch me. It’s a trap. I’ll never grow
into a pretty vessel with a use.
Dead roots infect their damaged seeds: echo
through gardens, plant by plant until they choose
to drown it out, to let the system go
and cut unfolding lessons at the root.

Catching breath below the pines,
we fall again. Stunted by
a view of ambition, killed mid-step
by a tongue my mouth can’t home.
It begs for yours, once a sweeter
denizen. Brief encounters.

Lower, in the midday pitch,
we play on dampened grass.
An old and broken home
morphs into tiny bricks –
layered perfectly for the second.

Now, under bright arches
we build and build. Push through:
pursue a touch of loss. Doors built,
splintering into a time that
screams too loud to hear recent tones.

A spin on the chapped path,
we dodge the looming break:
seconds to go. Swimming in
lightened patches on the grass,
we crumble sweetly as the stone.

Diving in with blinkered eyes, I find
a growth that crawls across my skin and sinks.
It swims and smirks at demons planted young
enough to draw a blank on valid roots.
Doubt nourishes delusions ‘til they bloom
in clear distortion. ****** boundaries
blurring in the glass that could be used
to feed an urgent withheld fantasy.
To bind my view on bare skin: agony.
The kind where breath escapes the reach of lungs
and bones could shatter pain-free, senses numbed
by visions of strict moulds and goals to hit
in light of realisation: I don't fit.

One final push. Afresh, I tell myself
I’ll make it farther from the starting line;
that clean will mean eternally this time.
I swear I won’t repeat a strike and swell
beyond the bones, stay intact for my health.
When well intentioned vows distort to lies,
the best that I can do is hide the thighs
and keep my body numbed by zinfandel.

I’m doing well. The surface still intact.
Slight murky colorations, senseless goals
in idiotic, broken breaths of angst.
Unsettled by the battle for control,
I might as well give up while urges last.
Afresh, the starting line: tempting me home.

My eyes latch on to you, as I begin
to notice yours. Alive and wide open
to wonder. Stuck within a starry gaze,
one million tiny planets mirrored in
the fresh and newly gleaming galaxies
you hold. I start to feel you float away.
I watch you set your sails, with hope in hand
and wonder if I’d ever catch a glimpse
of eyes so honest. I would lap it up -
swim right along beside you, if I could.

Delusion tells me there might be a way
to steal those looks, at least for a few months.
A vessel for your future; my today,
but one of disappointment, all the same,
or so they told me once when I was young.
I guess we’d have to wait and see if I
would break the way they forecast that I could
or if I’d fracture how I always do.
Either way, that fear skips over you.

I won’t deny, a temporary peace
could be the perfect savior to my doubt.
That soft and gentle smile you’re posing now
could be all mine for just a little while.
I’d let you sweetly sway me off to sleep,
protect me with your life while we both float
away into that sky and I would be
the perfect vessel before my decline.